Planning a Dinner Menu: It's a Piece of Cake!

A little-known (okay, well-known and rather obvious) secret: planning a dinner menu that your guests will love --but that won't make you work
your fingers to the bone-- is just a matter of striking a balance. This means choosing dinner recipes that don't require a huge amount of time
and effort to be impressive.

One thing that really helps to make this easy is choosing a theme. Is there a holiday approaching? Go with it. Do you love Indian food? Choose
an Indian dinner party menu. Love Italian? Do an Italian dinner party. Thai? Then do Thai. You get the idea.

There are lots of benefits to planning a dinner menu with recipes of the same cuisine. For one, if you have to buy any special ingredients,
chances are that your recipes will use many of the same ones. Even more important, the flavors will always go well together because chow
mein with a side of mac and cheese works for almost no one.

Especially for beginners, picking a theme makes planning dinner party menus easier-- and makes eating it more fun for your guests. Coming up
with perfect dinner party menus shouldn't have to be a struggle-- it should be fun. Even if it's your first dinner party.

Our Online Menu Planner Help

Coming up with ideas and themes is easy, but --ah!-- your job isnt done. When you have a few ideas for dishes (whether choosing recipes from
one type of cuisine or many) now comes the hard part: making a choice. Below, see a helpful online menu planner (just a simple chart) that
may help you in planning a dinner party menu. Simply print it out and fill it in, or fill it in with the free version of Adobe Acrobat you
already have.

Simply click the thumbnail to open the PDF file. File opens in a new page.

Using a chart to write out your themes and corresponding menu options makes planning a dinner menu a cinch. Just write in a dish you like for
each course and each dinner party theme. One menu will probably stand out as easier, cooler, more impressive, or... whatever. It all depends
on your priorities. You'll also know that you've considered each element of the dinner party menu when making your decision-- so you'll know
you've make the right one.